Category: Medicine and Health

Self-responsibility for healing?

~ Jennifer Barraclough ~ Leave a comment

Many self-help teachers claim that ‘you are 100% responsible for everything in your life’ and that ‘you create your own reality’ through your emotions, thoughts, beliefs and behaviour.  Though not everyone would accept such statements as literally true, there is no doubt that a person’s mental outlook makes a huge difference to the way they perceive and deal with their world.

Research studies show that those who believe they have a large measure of choice and control over their own lives tend to be healthier and happier than those with a more passive approach. This works through a combination of better self-care, with diet and exercise for example, and direct mind-body relationships. Self-responsibility is a key feature in most cases of remarkable recovery from cancer or other serious disease. But there is a fine dividing line between self-responsibility and self-blame, which makes people feel guilty about having become sick or failed to recover. After all an illness may be at least partly due to factors which are beyond personal control, such as genetic makeup or exposure to passive smoking. In many cases the cause is not known.

This said, a sense of self-responsibility can certainly enable improved coping with difficulties, as illustrated by the story of one recent client of mine. In the past few years she had faced huge challenges including the diagnosis and treatment of cancer, divorce, loss of her home and the need to start supporting herself financially in her late 50s. Not surprisingly she often felt low and anxious, and to make things worse had fallen into a pattern of feeling sorry for herself and looking on the negative side of things. For example rather than giving herself credit for having completed a training course and obtained a first job in her chosen field, she continually complained about the irritations at her place of work.

According to the Law of Attraction, if we focus on what is wrong with ourselves and our lives, we are likely to draw even more unwanted things into our experience. Negative feelings are a natural response to adversity and it is helpful to acknowledge and express them. It is not helpful to get stuck in them. Looking for positive aspects to appreciate in the present, and imagining more of these in the future, can be the key to turning them around.

I gave this client a mixture of several Bach flower remedies to deal with different aspects of her case but the one most relevant to today’s post is Willow. Dr Edward Bach recommended this remedy ‘for those who have suffered adversity and misfortune and find these difficult to accept without complaint or resentment … feel that they have not deserved so great a trial, that it was unjust … ‘ The Willow remedy helps such people to move away from the victim role and take control of their own destiny.

When my client came for followup she looked transformed for the better. She had made a shift towards self-responsibility by using both visualisation exercises and practical actions to further her long-term goal of developing her own business. Meanwhile she was being proactive about improving her present work conditions, and balancing her lifestyle with some new leisure activities. She wanted to take an active part in selecting the contents of her next bottle of remedies, which is to be encouraged with this therapy because according to the Bach Foundation’s code of practice, clients ‘remain at all times responsible for their own well-being’.

Glaucoma suspect

~ Jennifer Barraclough ~ 7 Comments

Those in the holistic healthcare field often believe they should enjoy perfect health themselves – that the right lifestyle and mental outlook should prevent any problems developing, but that even if something does go wrong it can be corrected by natural therapies, without recourse to orthodox medicine or surgery. Such beliefs were challenged for me when, as a ‘glaucoma suspect’, I was referred for LPI – laser peripheral iridotomy. However, my experience so far has been positive and maybe my story will be helpful to others considering this operation.

The only reason I went to the optometrist was that my driving license was due for renewal. It was quite a shock to be told that my vision was not so good as I thought it was, and that my intra-ocular pressures had increased to well above the normal range. I was diagnosed as having ‘narrow angles’ between the lens and the iris. This condition, which blocks the free drainage of aqueous fluid, may or may not progress to either acute or chronic glaucoma. I was referred to a specialist who gave me the choice of either having regular repeat observation, or LPI to create a tiny hole in each iris so allowing the fluid to circulate.

The prospect of an operation, however minor, on such an important and sensitive body part as the eyes was daunting. In general, too, I am wary of medical interventions based on screening tests rather than clinical symptoms. I spent some time researching LPI on Google. Most sites described it as a very safe and successful procedure with only a small risk of side-effects, but I found two separate reports from patients who claimed to have suffered devastating visual damage as a result of this operation. These cases were clearly quite atypical, but still alarming.

I also researched natural approaches to preventing glaucoma. I was already doing most of the right things – not smoking, walking several miles daily, eating plenty of fruit and vegetables – and seldom drinking more than one cup of coffee or one glass of wine per day. My homeopath suggested that walking barefoot on green grass would help relax the eyes and I found this a very pleasant exercise, apart for the time an enthusiastic large dog jumped onto my foot.

Eventually, weighing up the pros and cons, I decided that because visual loss from glaucoma is irreversible, I would accept the preventive surgery.

LPI is an outpatient procedure. On the day, a technician prepared my eyes with two kinds of drops: a local anaesthetic, and pilocarpine to constrict the pupils. Then I had to wait about half an hour, during which time my vision was slightly blurred and I felt rather shaky probably due to a mixture of pilocarpine and nervousness. This was the worst part of the whole experience.

The operation itself took only a few minutes, and the technology was impressive. My chin and forehead rested forward against a frame while my surgeon, seated opposite, applied more local anaesthetic to my right eye and inserted a special lens to prevent blinking and to magnify her view of the iris. She asked to to look straight ahead and then applied a series of laser shots in quick succession. I perceived these as starbursts of red light. They were uncomfortable rather than painful.

The same process was repeated on my left eye, then after a short rest in the waiting room I was ready to leave the clinic and have lunch in a nearby cafe with my husband, who had come with me to provide welcome moral support. I would not have been allowed to drive myself home after having both eyes treated on the same day, though driving is permitted for patients who have had only one eye done.

To my surprise I experienced no after-effects whatever, and felt no need to use the anti-inflammatory eye drops I had been given. Having expected to need a longer recovery period, I had planned to cut down on reading, writing, computing or watching movies for a few days. This involved some pleasant alternatives – including a tour of the vineyards of Waiheke Island. However it was quite a challenge to find activities which did not require use of the eyes, and this made me very conscious of the importance of sight.

At my six-week follow-up appointment I received the good news that my eye pressures were down and the intra-ocular appearances improved. While the long-term outcome remains to be seen, so far it seems that orthodox treatment has been worthwhile.

Update: Two-and-a-half years later, optometry checks every six months continue to show pressure readings above the normal range, but they are no worse than before and all other measurements are satisfactory. No further treatment has been recommended and I hope that a ‘healthy lifestyle’ and ‘positive outlook’ will keep my condition under control.

Three keys to self-healing

~ Jennifer Barraclough ~ Leave a comment

Reports of new treatment advances, whether in orthodox or alternative medicine, come out almost every day. Some will soon be forgotten or discredited, and others will prove to have real benefits, but none will work for all conditions or all cases – as I well know from my long experience of trying ‘cures’ for migraine.

The basic principles of healing are simple and timeless. There is an old saying all healing is self-healing and though external treatments often do achieve excellent results, none can completely replace the body’s own powers of recovery. We are not consciously aware of the wonderfully complex programs of maintenance and repair continually taking place inside us, but we can help them run better with natural therapies and mind-body techniques.

In a recent interview I was asked to sum up my own approach under three headings, and  the ones I chose were Balance, Positive Outlook, and Self-Determination.

Balance: balance is important in all sorts of ways, including a balanced lifestyle and diet, achieving a balanced state of mind, finding the best compromise when faced with a conflict. The Bach flower remedy Scleranthus is indicated for a sense of imbalance, indecision or fluctuating mood. Many of the other Bach remedies relate to achieving balance in one way or another, whether balancing your own needs with those of others, or balancing your focus between past, present and future.

Positive outlook: a genuinely positive outlook helps both in coping with illness and in strengthening the body’s resistance to illness. But negative feelings also have their place at times and demand expression – forcing yourself to ‘be positive’ all the time is unhelpful. Many of the flower remedies are designed to transform negative states of mind into their positive equivalents. Examples are Mimulus to replace fear with courage, and Gorse to restore lost hope.

Self-determination: this involves taking responsibility for those aspects of your life and health which lie within your power to control, for example making informed choices about treatment. One of the flowers which can be helpful here is Cerato, which promotes self-belief and faith in your own judgement. Another is Walnut, to protect from the outside influences which may distract from your chosen path.

I have written more about this in my book Focus on Healing: Holistic Self-Help for Medical Illness (published 2009 by Papawai Press, Auckland).

Dr Edward Bach was a strong advocate of self-healing. He believed that most bodily illnesses originated with some kind of  imbalance of emotion or personality and that his flower remedies, by  ‘flooding our bodies with the beautiful qualities of our higher nature’, would improve both mental and physical well-being. When Bach put forward such ideas in the 1920s and 1930s they were largely rejected by his colleagues, but mainstream research in mind-body medicine is validating many of his intuitive insights today.

A final comment – according to several published trials, the Bach flower remedies work no better than placebo. This contrasts with the excellent results obtained by trained practitioners. Over 80% of the clients treated in my own practice respond well. I have some ideas about the reasons for the discrepancy between research findings and the clinical observations, and will perhaps discuss these in a future post.